


The Marble Scroll

by Quasar



Series: Reading Between the Lines [3]
Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Case Fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-07 06:50:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3165398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quasar/pseuds/Quasar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The LITs go in search of the missing Flynn and find more complications than they expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is less of a missing scene from an episode and more of a missing episode, along with some of my own headcanon established in The Ravell'd Sleave.

It was just after they had dealt with some overexcited elementals spreading dense fog over the Newfoundland coast to the disruption of shipping and commerce, when Eve began to feel uneasy. They were all safe back at the Annex with no loose ends to tie up, so "Why do I feel like the job isn't finished?" she asked.

"The job is finished," said Jenkins. "I am not responsible for your feelings."

Eve shook her head. "Something isn't right. I just know it."

"Ah, spidey senses tingling?" Ezekiel said. "I get that sometimes. Usually right before something comes up to threaten my life or freedom."

"Do you feel it now?" she asked him curiously.

"Nope. All on you, mate." 

She glanced at Jake and Cassandra, who shrugged at her and looked blank. Closing her eyes briefly, Eve concentrated on the niggling sense of worry inside her. It had that little zip that was starting to become familiar as a signal of the supernatural. But why were none of the junior librarians or the caretaker feeling anything? Why was it only affecting her?

Maybe it was related to her job as Guardian? But all of her charges were here and safe... except for one.

Eyes snapping open, she pulled out her cell phone. They had been out of range for a few hours, in a small boat being towed over the Grand Banks by a group of mermaids (she was _not_ going to ask about the collective noun for mermaids) after their outboard motor had given out. It turned out that mermaids could swim faster than outboards, anyway. But apparently, while they were out of contact, Eve had missed a text message.

_Need some hlknm_ was all it said.

"Flynn's in trouble," she said, holding up the phone for everyone to see.

"Oh no, something got him while he was typing?" Cassandra breathed.

"Least he was still able to press Send," Ezekiel pointed out.

"How're we supposed to help if we don't even know where he is?" Jake demanded.

Eve spun around. "Jenkins, can you tell where the Librarian is?"

"No," said the caretaker flatly. Seeing four pairs of anxious eyes fixed on him, he elaborated, "When Flynn was new at the job, yes, he could be tracked fairly easily. But after years of exposure to magical energies and techniques, he's become much better at evading detection. If the Library won't tell me, I can't find him."

"I can," said Ezekiel. "Or at least I can tell where he was when he sent that text. Give me your phone," he said to Eve.

She handed it over and watched what he did as closely as she could, but within five seconds Ezekiel was calling up screens and applications she was certain had never been installed on her phone, and five seconds after that she was completely lost.

"Okay, here it is," said Ezekiel eventually. "Last transmission went through a cell tower in Egypt. Specifically, Alexandria."

"That's a suburb of Cairo, isn't it?" asked Eve. 

"No, it's nearly a hundred miles northwest of Cairo, on the Mediterranean coast," Jenkins answered.

"In ancient times there was a huge library there," Jake said dreamily. "Founded in the time of Alexander the Great."

"Yes, it formed the original heart of _the_ Library," said Jenkins. "When the Library of Alexandria supposedly was destroyed in a fire, that was the moment that the magical collections became sequestered from the more mundane materials. The magic protected itself then much as it is doing now."

"So Flynn was probably there searching for a connection to the Library today," Eve concluded. "Where would he look?"

"Oh, I know!" Jake crowed. "Probably in the Serapeum, near the acropolis - that was the last portion of the ancient library that survived."

Ezekiel was still playing with Eve's phone. "The acropolis, you said? Yeah, here it is on the map. That's within range of the cell phone tower Flynn used."

"Can you get us to the Serpentum-thingy?" Eve asked.

"The Serapeum, and yes," said Jenkins slowly. "But there's a maze of catacombs under that area. It could take you years to search all of it."

"Just get us there, and then we'll worry about finding clues," she ordered. She pulled off the heavy cable-knit sweater she'd been wearing in Newfoundland, assuming that Egyptian weather would be milder, and checked the clip in her gun. "Everybody ready?"

A few minutes later they were stumbling through the back door into a dark, cool night. It was a few hours before dawn here, so there was hardly any traffic or passers-by. They were at the edge of an open area with a huge stone pillar lit up by floodlights. Various signs around the square had information for tourists, some of the signs in Arabic but some in multiple languages. 

Eve focused in on the largest sign she could find with English on it, but she'd barely read a sentence about Emperor Diocletian before Jake was saying, "This way to the Serapeum. Come on!"

They needed Ezekiel's help to get through some locked doors, but the late hour helped them avoid any notice. Soon they were wandering through underground halls which transitioned from modern architecture to much older bricks, and a while after that the tourist guide signs disappeared.

Ezekiel still had Eve's phone, which he was using to track Flynn's phone by GPS. "Couldn't you use your own phone for that?" Eve asked, trying to snatch her possession back. Ezekiel's phone was the latest, largest, and fastest - much more sophisticated than hers.

"Nope. It's like Jenkins said, Flynn's used to avoiding detection. He trusts _you_ to track him, not me."

Eve made a mental note to be very careful with that phone in the future. Maybe a code lock and a fingerprint together?

"Anyway, my battery's low." Ezekiel shrugged. "Been a long day."

And all his fancy apps used a lot of juice, right. Eve sighed and resigned herself to a complete reset of her own phone, assuming she ever got it back.

"We're getting close," Ezekiel said. "Should be right around this corner..." 

The tunnel opened into a medium-sized room, just large enough to need a double row of pillars for support. Their flashlights showed cracked friezes on the wall, some large lidded urns with paint mostly flaked off, and stone tables in the corners.

They all stopped, looking around. 

"Should be in here," said Ezekiel. "Unless it's above or below?" He poked the phone again. "No, this looks like the right level."

"Maybe he dropped his phone," said Eve. "Look on the floor, in corners and behind pillars." She headed for one of the stone altar/table things and then slowed when she realized, "Oh no, these are sarcophagus...es."

"You think he's in one of them?" Jake growled.

"Over here!" called Cassandra before Eve could answer. The others hurried to join her, their flashlights converging on the ground behind a pillar.

A familiar tweed jacket with a pocket square and a rather sad-looking carnation in the button hole lay rumpled on the floor. Nestled inside the jacket were a matching vest and button-down shirt, with a neckcloth trailing out of the collar. Just below the jacket hem lay a pair of brown corduroy pants, and at the bottom of the pants were two boots - one lying flat and one inconguously upright.

"This mean he's running around here naked?" Jake said uncertainly as Eve knelt to check out the clothes.

"Maybe something dissolved him," said Ezekiel with a little boy's relish of the gruesome. "Nah, there's no goo. So he must have evaporated!"

"Here's his flashlight," Cassandra reported, retrieving it from where it had rolled away.

"And his phone," said Eve, finding it tucked under the right sleeve of the nested jacket-and-shirt. She picked it up with a frown and checked it; the garbled message she had received was the last thing sent. 

"Doesn't he usually have a leather bag with him?" Cassandra asked.

"Sometimes two," Eve replied, turning to run her light along the ground. "It or they are missing. Guys, this is not good." 

"Should we... check inside the sarcophagi?" Jake suggested.

They were all silent a moment thinking about that, and about what they might find.

A noise broke the silence and made them jump. Two flashlights and two phone lights converged on a small moving form on top of one of the lidded urns.

It was a cat, a brown tabby spotted and striped in black, crouching and squinting irritably in the light. It gave a low, elongated meow like a grumble, knocking a stone chip off the urn to match the first noise that had startled them all.

Everyone gave nervous little laughs. Eve looked back down at the pile of clothes and sighed. "Okay, Cassandra's right. We need to check inside everything that's big enough to hide a person. Also, keep your eyes open for anything that looks like this." She showed them a picture on Flynn's phone of a bas-relief wall carving in much better shape than the ones they had seen so far.

Jake gave a low whistle. "That's Archimedes - no, wait, I think it's Euclid - teaching at the Library of Alexandria." 

"Well, the picture was taken just a couple of minutes before the text message, so it must be somewhere near here. And keep an eye out for Flynn's bag while you're at it." She knelt over the pile of clothes again, taking several pictures of how they were laid out (using Flynn's phone, since Ezekiel still had hers), then began to fold the clothes into a bundle. She hoped Flynn would be needing them back soon.

Jake and Ezekiel started checking inside the smaller urns first, making the cat complain about being disturbed from its perch. It stalked over to where Eve was kneeling, twining around her ankles and making her jump in startlement. The cat flicked its ears back in annoyance and turned away to sniff at the still-standing boot.

Eve picked up the boot and felt something rattle inside. She tipped the boot upside-down and something small fell out into her hand. At first she thought it was a carved stone scarab in the ancient Egyptian style, but as she turned it over in the flashlight beam she saw that it was a tiny carving of a rolled-up papyrus scroll.

"Baird, we're going to need all hands to shift these lids," Jake said.

"Okay, just a second." Eve set the folded clothes in a stack on the floor and headed over to the sarcophagus where the others were waiting, still turning the little marble scroll in her hands. Why would Flynn have tucked the thing into his boot? Was his satchel already taken by that time?

In her hand, the apparently-solid carving shifted, and she realized it was starting to unroll. 

"Uh, Baird?"

"Hang on a second guys, I think I have something here." She gripped the little scroll by one of the handles and peeled it open further.

At her feet, the cat hissed. 

"Baird!"

She looked up to see what appeared to be a wall of flame sweeping across the room towards them. "Everybody out!" She darted back to the pile of clothes and snatched them up, chivvying the rest of the team before her out the door.

They went a little ways down the tunnel and turned to look back; the glowing red-orange wall kept advancing, and it seemed to be speeding up. "C'mon people, move! Move, move!" Eve yelled.

At the front of the group, Ezekiel nearly tripped over the cat but recovered himself, bent, and scooped it neatly off the floor before leading the way back out.

They stumbled through a door and found themselves back in the Annex, without having asked Jenkins for an escape. Eve turned breathlessly to make sure the double doors closed before the wall of fire could reach them, and then they all stood trying to catch their breath. 

Eve set the stack of clothes - with only one boot, oops - on Flynn's desk. Her hands were shaking. Had that fire been triggered by something she did? What if Flynn was caught back there somewhere, defenseless?

The cat jumped down from Ezekiel's arms to sit on the desk and start washing itself.

"Oh good, you found him," said Jenkins.

"What?" Jake panted.

"You found the Librarian. But why is he a cat?"


	2. Chapter 2

They all turned to stare at the cat.

"That's... _Flynn_?!" Eve managed. "The _cat_ is Flynn?"

The cat stopped washing and gazed at her for a moment, one paw still daintily raised, then went back to drawing the paw over his ear.

They all started talking at once, explanations and questions tumbling over each other, mostly aimed at Jenkins. The caretaker handled it by ignoring half of what they had to say and, apparently, already knowing the other half.

"Yes, yes, I expect it was a member of the cult of Bast," said Jenkins, stifling the babble for a moment. "Her statue was one of the items stolen from the Library immediately before it closed."

"And that could turn a person into a cat?" Ezekiel said skeptically.

"Well, the statue, plus a person with a connection to Bast herself -"

"Wait, Bast is real?" said Jake. "Egyptian gods and goddesses are real?"

"- Plus the magic that has recently been released into the world, yes, that could turn a person into a cat. All the ancient gods and goddesses exist, or formerly existed, as manifestations of the beliefs of their followers. As the number of followers wanes, so does the strength of the deity."

Eve tried to bring the focus back. "Okay, so we're looking for someone with a cat statue? It would be a member of the Serpent Brotherhood, right, since they're the ones that stole it?"

Jenkins frowned. "They wouldn't necessarily need to _have_ the statue, now that it's loose in the world. So it might not be the Brotherhood, but someone with a prior connection to Bast."

"But we didn't see anyone else there at all," Cassandra pointed out. "With or without a statue."

"Maybe they left after Flynn got changed into a cat," Jake guessed.

"What we _did_ see was a scary wall of fire," Ezekiel said. "Did that come from Bast too?"

Jenkins shook his head. "Not typical of her cult at all."

"But we found something else," said Eve, holding out the little stone scroll. "This was in Flynn's boot. It looks solid, but it started to move in my hand, and that was when the fire appeared." She gripped one of the little handles and tested it, but it was back to seeming solid.

"Don't move it now!" said Jake. "We don't want fire here with all these books and stuff."

"I doubt it would work here," said Jenkins, studying the little scroll over her shoulder. "That looks like it might have come from some sort of carving, perhaps a frieze."

Remembering, Eve pulled the cell phone from her pocket - Flynn's phone, not her own - and called up the photo she had found. "Something like this?"

Jenkins took the phone. For all that he favored older models for his car and telephone, the caretaker was adept with newer technology as well. He quickly zoomed in on a corner of the picture. "A lot like that, I would say." 

The corner of the picture showed a man at the top of the steps of a temple, apparently reading from a scroll to the crowd gathered below. The scroll looked a lot like the one Eve was holding in her hand. In fact, it was identical, if she held the little one at the right angle.

"Hang on, zoom out again," said Jake, leaning in for a closer look. "Pan over - here, let me have it."

Jenkins released the phone with a sour expression.

"There's a lot of people in this carving that don't really belong," said Jake. "The style of the carving is from about one or two centuries BCE, but it's in really good condition for that."

"Preserved by magic?" Eve guessed, and Jenkins didn't contradict her.

"Yeah, but there's more to it than that. This guy at the top of the steps, I think that's Euclid - he was around at the time the great library was founded, but there aren't a lot of images of him anywhere. So he's holding the scroll, okay? But down here there's a guy dressed like a Roman Legionary from three or four centuries later. These two look like Byzantine soldiers. And here's a guy in modern European clothes - well, maybe nineteenth century at the oldest."

"And next to him is a woman holding a cat!" Eve pointed out. "Could that be a worshipper of Bast?"

Jenkins raised an eyebrow. "Possibly."

"So, in the photo that Flynn took of the carving, Euclid is holding a scroll," said Eve slowly. "But I found this scroll in Flynn's boot, not in the carving."

Cassandra gasped and pointed at her. "You think more than one thing came out of the carving!"

Eve nodded. "Like maybe a worshipper of Bast..."

"Who then turned Flynn into a cat!" Ezekiel finished.

Eve frowned and deflated a little. "Well, when you put it that way it does sound hard to believe." She turned to look at the cat. He had found the carnation on top of the pile of folded clothes, and was batting at it curiously, trying to pop it out of its buttonhole. "Jenkins, are you _sure_...?"

"Positive," said the caretaker. "The Annex knows when the Librarian arrives. Check his clothes; you'll likely find cat hairs on the inside. He must have crawled out of the clothes after being transformed."

"He's right," said Cassandra almost apologetically, pointing to the evidence. "The neckcloth has the most hair, probably because it was the tightest thing to escape from." She held out her hand, fingers rubbing together, and the cat ignored her, still intent on the small flower.

"It must have taken him a minute or so to change, if he was able to send most of a text message," Eve reflected. She hoped the transformation hadn't been too painful.

"We have to go back," Jake concluded. "We gotta find that carving and see if it looks any different than it did when Flynn took the picture. Figure out if that scroll there really came out of the carving."

"And the cat lady too," Eve concluded. "If that's really how Flynn got turned into a cat, we need to find her and... somehow persuade her to reverse the effect."

"So we're taking Flynn the cat back to Egypt with us?" Ezekiel said.

Everyone turned again to look at the cat. He batted the carnation, and it bounced off the spine of a book to fall on the floor. Tail high, the cat skittered after it.

"I think it would be safer to leave him here," said Eve. "Until we know what's really going on."

"Now, wait a second -" Jenkins began.

"We don't want him running away from us and getting lost in Alexandria," Eve pointed out.

"Or Portland, for that matter," said Cassandra. "I'll... just go make sure the front door is closed." She slipped out and headed down the hall.

"So we're going to capture the cat lady and bring her back here?" said Ezekiel.

"I sincerely doubt that a worshipper of Bast would care to be called a 'cat lady,'" Jenkins began.

Eve ignored him. "First we find her. Then we question her. _Then_ we decide whether to bring her to the cat or vice versa. Maybe there's a way we can reverse the effect without her. Jenkins, look into that - see if you can find any alternatives. And try to keep it... him... _Flynn_ out of trouble while we're gone."

Jenkins glowered. But as the four of them lined up ready to go through the back door once more, Jenkins was prowling the corners of the room whispering, "Here, kitty kitty..."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm mentally casting Malcom McDowell as the OC who's attempting to hijack this story. Because wouldn't it be fun to see him play against Larroquette? And Frewer?

Fortunately the portal knew where to connect now, so they were right back in the tunnels just a couple of turns from the room where they had found Flynn's things. They paused in the room and Eve cast an uneasy glance at the sarcophagi.

"They're probably empty," Ezekiel reassured her. "Must have been looted centuries ago."

"Unless they've been refilled since then," said Eve. She reminded herself that Flynn had said it wasn't as bad as being in a coffin, then wondered how he had grounds to make that comparison.

"Right," said Cassandra, looking as disturbed as Eve felt. "Well... if we're looking for the carving, I would guess it's through _that_ door. Since we already checked the tunnels back the other way."

The next stretch of hallway had more of the cracked friezes, in slightly better shape than the sarcophagus room but not as good as the carving in the photo. Jake was in his element, reading the story of the friezes backwards through time and pointing out which way to go next.

Then the hall dead-ended in a small room with no pillars or urns, just an uncannily well-preserved carving on the far wall. And a man with a lit torch, leaning close to study the carving.

For a moment Eve thought it was Flynn by the linen pants and pale tweed jacket. Even the white hat and cane weren't out of character for Flynn although she hadn't seen him with those items before. But as he turned to look at the newcomers she saw the man was quite elderly, with a snub nose and a shock of white hair peeping from under the hat's brim.

"Oh, hello," said the man in an English accent. "Are you the ones who - oh, hmm." He tilted his head to the side, studying them. "Perhaps not."

Eve noticed that he spent more time looking at herself and Cassandra, and her jaw tightened. "I'm Colonel Eve Baird," she began, and watched his eyebrows fly up.

Jake stepped forward with his most deceptive country-boy smile. "We're just here to look at the carving."

"Oh, by all means, have a look. Your lights are much brighter than mine." The man stood aside, eyeing Jake's flashlight curiously. "You may call me Cedric," he added.

Eve noted he had not said that was his _name_. She resolved to keep an eye on the old man. He noticed her frown and leaned more heavily on his cane.

"Check it out, Baird," said Jake eagerly. "We were right. Euclid's scroll is gone -" His beam illuminated the robed man standing empty-handed at the top of the steps. "And so is the cat lady."

"Hold it, Stone," she ordered, looking from the carving in the shifting light of one torch and multiple wandering flashlights to the photo on Flynn's phone. "That's not all that's missing." 

One of the anachronistic figures that Jake had pointed out in the photo, the man in almost-modern clothing, was no longer part of the carving. But he did look remarkably like the man standing next to them with a torch. 

Cassandra, looking around Eve's elbow, gave a startled gasp as she saw the connection.

"I say, that's quite a remarkable device," Cedric exclaimed, gazing at the phone. "A painting that glows!"

"It's not a painting," Cassandra told him gently. "It's a photo."

"A photograph, really? But it has so many colors!" He reached for the phone, but Eve pulled it away.

"I can do you better than that," said Ezekiel with irrepressible mischief. "Say cheese!" He aimed his own phone - no, it was Eve's phone that she hadn't reclaimed yet - at the old man.

"I beg your pardon?" The camera flash caught Cedric with his head tilted and brow furrowed in puzzlement.

"Here you go. Knock yourself out, mate." Ezekiel handed Eve's phone over to the stranger.

"Jones!" she hissed.

"How astonishing!" Cedric marveled at his own image.

"Excuse me," said Cassandra diffidently. "So... you and the Bast cult lady were both in the carving before, but now you're both... out here. So did you see which way she went?"

The old man, wrapped up in peering at the phone, hardly reacted to the claim that he had recently been inside a piece of art. "I believe she was released before I was. I couldn't say how long before; time did seem to pass very strangely when I was trapped in a flat piece of marble."

"How long were you -" Eve began, at the same time that everyone else was talking.

"Did you _talk_ to the cult lady -" Cassandra was saying.

"How'd you get trapped?" Jake asked, and Ezekiel said, "Way to time-travel into the future!"

Cedric glanced up. "Yes, the future," he mused. "They certainly had none of these glowing photos when I was free last."

"When was -" but Eve's question was lost again to Ezekiel saying, "It's not just a photo - you're holding a phone."

Cedric tilted the smartphone in his hand. "A... phoin?"

"A cell phone," Cassandra articulated for him.

Cedric frowned. "This device is intended for... listening to cells? Or reproducing the sounds of cells? But it seems designed to be looked at."

"It's a multi-functional device," Eve said firmly, before anyone else could step in. "And it's mine, actually." She reclaimed it from him and held up Flynn's phone instead. "Now, what can you tell us about this woman who was in the carving with you? We need to find her as soon as possible."

"Well, as you said, she was a worshipper of Bastet. From, oh, the fourth or fifth century, I would guess. Anno Domini, that is."

"About the last time there was any Pharaonic religion left in Egypt," said Jake. "Before Christianity and then Islam displaced it."

"Yes, yes. She speaks an early form of Coptic Egyptian. Not that we did much speaking, in there." Cedric waved vaguely at the carving without looking at it.

Eve's eyes narrowed. "You seem very calm about having been trapped in a carving for... how long?"

"Oh, I've seen stranger things in my time," Cedric said airily.

"Your time," Jake said. "That would be, what, Edwardian era?"

"Good heavens, is that what they're calling it now?" Cedric chuckled. "But come, I thought there was some urgency here. You wanted to find this young lady, did you not?"

"Yes," said Eve.

"Not yet," said Jake. "Sorry, Baird, but we have to understand what's going on with this carving. It could be important."

"Well, as I understand it, someone extracted the control device, yes? The scroll?" Cedric gestured to her.

Eve touched her pocket where the scroll was wrapped in Flynn's pocket handkerchief just in case it tried to activate again. "The scroll controls the carving?"

"It traps or releases people. As I recall it, I was examining the scroll when a wave of orange magic passed over me, almost like fire. And then I was inside the carving."

"So that means Flynn managed to get the control device out of the carving without triggering it!" Cassandra was getting interested in the reconstruction of events.

"Or he triggered it the other way, so instead of trapping him it released the cat lady," said Ezekiel.

"And then she cast a spell and transformed him before he could... do whatever he came here to do," Jake concluded.

"And then we came along and found the control device and released Cedric!" Cassandra finished with satisfaction.

"I expect he came to find me," said Cedric. "Assuming that 'Flynn' is the name of the Librarian." 

Eve pulled her gun and pointed it at Cedric. "What do you know about the Librarian?"

"Why, I was one, a very long time ago. Retired now, of course, but I still do occasional jobs for the Library. At least, I did, back in the, er, Edwardian era you said?" Cedric smoothed his lapel. "I suppose there must be a new King these days, then."

"Why are you pointing a gun at him?" Cassandra whispered to Eve.

"Because I don't trust him," she said in a low voice, never taking her eyes off the man. "He knows too much. And he's too calm about all of this."

"It's quite all right, my dear," said Cedric to Cassandra. "The Colonel clearly isn't serious or he would have his finger on the trigger instead of on the guard."

"'He?'" Jake repeated.

"And she hasn't taken off the safety either," Ezekiel pointed out.

"Shut up, Jones," Eve ground out.

"Why'd you call her 'he?'" asked Jake.

Cedric looked from one to the other. "Well, I assume it must have been the same Bastet worshipper who transformed the Colonel into a woman? I gather you're with the French Foreign Legion, sir, Yves being a French name? But I can't help wondering why you're working with this charming but unsophisticated couple and their houseboy."

Everyone choked to a greater or lesser degree. Jake and Cassandra took a step further apart, Ezekiel yelped "Houseboy!" and Eve's thumb went to the gun's safety before she made herself pause.

"Now you're provoking us," she growled. "Deliberately."

"Of course I am, but you did point a gun at me, you know." Cedric smiled sweetly. "You're a Guardian, aren't you? And that jacket is clearly tailored for the form you have now. But it's important to get the measure of anyone you'll be working with, and so I have. Now, since you haven't shot me yet, shall we go find the young lady who transformed your friend into... what precisely _did_ she do to the Librarian?"

"Turned him into a cat," Cassandra admitted before Eve could stop her.

"Enough!" Eve snapped. "No more free information."

Cedric folded his hands over his cane and regarded her with exaggerated patience.

"If you're really working for the Library," Eve told him sternly, "you're going to help us. But no more digging for information, and stop trying to get reactions out of us. _We_ -" She raised the muzzle of the gun, put the safety back on, and holstered it under her arm. "- Will work with you, for now, and reassess later if we have to."

He nodded. "Very well."


	4. Chapter 4

"All right, we're going to leave these tunnels by whatever route is most obvious. We'll assume the cultist doesn't have any magical lock picks, right? So we have to try to think like she would. This way." Eve started back toward the hall they had come in by.

Jake cleared his throat. "Uh, hang on, Baird, do you really think we should just leave this thing here? I mean, magical carving that traps people. Could be dangerous, right? Flynn was looking for it for a reason."

Eve paused, looking back to the carving. "It's too heavy for one person to carry."

"Me and Jones can handle it. Probably. If we can figure out how to get it off the wall."

"Leave it to me!" Ezekiel said, cracking his knuckles with relish.

" _Without_ damaging it!" Jake growled.

"Of course." Ezekiel looked hurt. "I never scratch the merchandise!"

"All right. You two get this carving back to the..." Eve glanced at Cedric. "Back home. Send me a text when you get there. Cassandra and Cedric and I will look for the cultist."

They followed the tunnels for a while, finding a lot more dead ends than they had when Ezekiel was opening doors for them. Finally they came back to one of the doors the party had unlocked to get here in the first place - the door that had been invisible until Cassandra deduced its existence from the surrounding geometry, and Ezekiel found the hidden lever.

"This was sealed at the time we arrived," Eve pointed out doubtfully. "So it would have been sealed for the cultist when she was trying to get out."

"Would it?" Cassandra asked. "I mean, Flynn had to get in, didn't he? Maybe he opened it, and then the cat lady closed it again on her way out."

"Because she's deeply committed to catacomb security, right," said Eve.

"She might have waited in one of these other tunnels until your party passed by, and then took the direction she saw you came from." Cedric cocked his head at them. "It does seem to be the only exit she could have taken, unless she used some powerful magic."

Eve sighed but couldn't think of a better explanation. "Well, at least if she went out this way within the past hour, she isn't all that far ahead of us. We'll try it."

They closed the secret door behind them and continued upward. This brought them back out to the square facing the floodlit pillar. The sky above was just starting to get lighter with the approach of dawn, and vehicle traffic had picked up a little although it wasn't quite up to rush-hour craziness yet.

"Good heavens!" said Cedric, turning in place to take in the lights and the fast-moving cars. "This _has_ changed a great deal in... how long have I been gone?"

"The year is two thousand fifteen," Cassandra said softly.

Cedric staggered, and Eve put out a hand to catch his elbow. "Well," he said slowly. "That makes it a hundred and ten years. I suppose it might have been worse."

"It was worse, for the cultist," Eve pointed out. "If you're right, she was in that carving for fifteen hundred years. And then she came up here to find..."

"A different world," Cassandra finished.

They all looked across the square, trying to picture it with ancient eyes.

"The pillar," Cedric concluded. "It's the only familiar thing she would see. In her time, it was barely a century old."

They headed toward the pillar, needing to cross a street (Eve grabbed Cedric by the collar to keep him from walking out in front of traffic) and climb some steps up to a higher level with a broad open area. There weren't as many lights here, so the slate-blue glow of the sky was their main illumination. They aimed themselves at the pillar, but they were only halfway across the open area when Cassandra hissed, "Colonel. Eve!"

Eve turned to look where Cassandra was pointing and saw a statue of a sphinx. At the base of the statue's plinth huddled a small figure in sand-colored robes. Eve threw up a hand to forestall Cassandra's rush and they approached slowly. It was a woman, but it was hard to tell if she was the same one from the carving since she had pulled a fold of robe over her hair.

"Is that her?" Eve murmured to Cedric.

"Everything - and everyone - does look rather differently now, but yes, it may well be the same young lady."

As they got closer, Eve realized that there was a leather band running across the woman's chest. She followed it down and growled, "That's her. She has Flynn's bag." Her hand curled into a fist. "Be careful. If she starts to do anything... magical, dodge around the statue."

Cassandra nodded understanding. Cedric stepped forward, sweeping off his hat gallantly. Leaning on his cane with his white hair nearly glowing in the soft twilight, he was the very picture of a harmless elderly gentleman. "Good morning," he said gently, and then said something with the same inflection in a couple of other languages.

The woman's head came up on the third or fourth attempt, and she spoke in a desperate rush. Eve could see Cedric was having difficulty following her, but he replied slowly and calmly. Their conversation went back and forth, and the woman's speech slowed, but it didn't seem so much that she was calming down as she was sinking into despair.

"Ask her about the man who had the bag," Eve urged.

Cedric didn't acknowledge her as the exchange continued, but a minute later he said, "She claims he wanted to hurt her."

"I doubt that," said Eve with a frown at the young woman.

"Or put her back in the carving," Cedric continued.

"Maybe, but he wouldn't even do that without a reason. So, what, she transformed him and stole his bag?"

Cedric held up his hat for silence while he resumed talking. Eve used the hat as cover to unholster her gun, then held it ready down by her hip.

"She's very confused and distressed," Cedric reported after another minute of talking. "She doesn't understand what's happened and I'm not certain my grasp of early Coptic is sufficient to explain it to her. In any case, she blames your friend, and says that the spell she cast on him was far less powerful than the spell he cast to change the world."

"It wasn't Flynn's - never mind that. Can she reverse the transformation?" Eve demanded, but the woman was speaking again, urgently. She rose to her feet groping at the strap of Flynn's bag. Eve took a step to the side, angling for a clear line of fire.

But the woman, still speaking tearfully, just drew the strap over her head and slung the bag at Cedric's feet. Then she took off running.

"Stop her!" Cassandra yelped, and ran after, getting into Eve's line of fire. 

Eve cursed and followed, but the young woman was faster than both of them. She reached the end of the open area and rushed down the steps faster than Cassandra could, and Eve didn't have room to dodge around. At the bottom of the steps -

"No, don't!" Cassandra cried as the young woman darted into the road directly in front of a delivery truck. When the _thump_ and the screech of brakes were just echoes in the air and the mind, Cassandra turned back with both hands over her face, to be caught and steadied by Eve.

"Was that... an accident?" Eve asked, stowing her gun. Certainly a young woman from fifteen centuries ago would not be familiar with the concept of lethal traffic.

But Cassandra shook her head against Eve's shoulder. "I saw it in her eyes. I knew what she was going to do."

Cedric came puffing down the steps behind them. "Is she dead?"

"I'll find out." Eve patted Cassandra on the shoulder and stepped toward the crowd that was gathering by the side of the street. The driver of the truck was talking loudly, probably insisting that he had had no chance to stop.

"Wait! She has a ring," Cedric said urgently. "You must get that ring. It may be the key to reversing the spell on your friend."

Eve nodded and shouldered her way into the crowd. She had seen the young woman's head bounce off the front of the truck so she wasn't completely surprised to find it a bloody mess. All the bystanders were just standing around staring in shock, and her instinct was to try to organize the crowd to get the best help possible for the victim. But it looked like it was already too late for that anyway, and Eve's next duty was to spread confusion. She took a deep breath and reached for her meager acting skills.

"Oh no! What happened, is she hurt?" She threw herself down in the road next to the body, patting at it and clutching at a blood-spattered hand. She did manage to confirm that there was no pulse before hands were on her, pulling her away. She let them haul her back while she pretended to be grief-stricken, meanwhile pocketing the ring she had pulled free. She could hear sirens approaching as she staggered back from the scene.

"Did you get it?" Cedric asked.

Eve whirled on him and grabbed him by the lapel. "Tell me you didn't talk her into that!" she hissed, looming over him in her best intimidating manner.

He didn't flinch, but shook his head regretfully. "I failed to talk her out of it. I think she was lost in despair as soon as she realized she wouldn't be able to get back to where she came from."

"Why don't you trust him?" Cassandra asked. "He's been really helpful, hasn't he?"

Eve glared into Cedric's eyes a little longer. He gave back a grim, knowing smile and pulled his jacket carefully from her hand. "Here, I believe this belongs to your friend." And he passed Flynn's bag over to her.

Eve stepped back, checked the latch on the bag, and hung it from her shoulder. The crowd was growing, and the first emergency vehicle was nearly here. "All right, let's find a quiet spot to make a call."

She checked her phone while they walked: no messages from Jake or Ezekiel. Remembering that Ezekiel's battery was dead, she texted Jake, _How's it going?_ But there was no reply by the time they found an empty alley with a door in it. So she dialed the Annex instead.

"Yes, what is it!" Jenkins snapped more sharply than usual.

"We need a door." Eve pulled the phone away from her ear and read off the longitude and latitude for him.

"Yes, yes, give me a minute, we're a little..." Jenkins hung up.

"Is everything okay?" asked Cassandra when Eve stared at the phone blankly.

"I'm not sure, he sounded sort of flustered." Eve's mind was whirling with speculation: she knew Dulaque had upset Jenkins badly, could he be back now? Had something happened to Ezekiel and Jake? Or was it possible the cat had escaped?

Before she could get too worried, blue light flashed behind the small wooden door and she pushed first Cassandra, then Cedric towards it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little suggestion: if you've ever thought of combining two awful things in order to get the suffering over faster, well... sometimes it works. The kidney stone completely distracted me from the flu, and it would probably have been more awful to experience them sequentially. But it turns out the combination (plus the attendant medications) is not good for getting any writing done. Sorry for the delay!

No one was waiting by the door when they got into the Annex. It took Eve's eyes a moment to pick out Ezekiel and Jenkins hovering over a cart that held something large and sheet-draped, over by Jenkin's favored work spot under the curve of the stairs.

"Carefully!" Jenkins was saying.

"Got it mate, edges only," Ezekiel answered, lifting his own end of the oblong thing. 

"My word," Cedric breathed, drinking in the Annex. "There _have_ been some improvements here. Electricity? And what is -" He reached for a laptop sitting open on the edge of the long worktable. 

Eve slapped his hand. "Don't. Touch. Anything!" She growled at him, then headed for the back of the room. "Jones, what's going on? You got the carving back here, right? So where's Stone? I would expect him to be hovering over it."

"He's not hovering over it, because he's hovering _inside_ it," Ezekiel said with a disgusted look. With the heavy object settled on Jenkins' desk, Ezekiel pulled back the sheet to reveal the carving, just as Eve had guessed.

At the top of the temple steps, apparently watching Euclid in rapt attention, was a carving of a man in rumpled jeans, a leather jacket, and an oddly elaborate scarf, with a crest of hair poking up at the front. Eve groaned.

"How is that possible?" said Cassandra, approaching the carving with her hands clasped behind her back. "We still have the scroll."

"I don't know!" Ezekiel protested. "We got the thing off the wall and we were carrying it along the hallway, and Stone said his grip was slipping, and next thing I knew he disappeared in a flash of orange light. We're just lucky the carving didn't crack, 'cause there's no way I could have kept it from hitting the floor. Hard. Had to get Jenkins to help me carry it to the door, and he said we'd better cover it up and not touch it directly." Ezekiel looked around. "Where is Jenkins?"

The caretaker bustled in from the back room, holding a device like a transistor radio with two antennae ending in little brass spheres. "Yes, yes, I hope you've still got the... scroll..." He didn't freeze so much as he ran down, staring blank-faced at the center of the room.

Eve turned to glance at Cedric, whose face was splitting into an enormous grin. "My dear chap!" he exclaimed, surging forward between Eve and Cassandra, dropping his cane, and throwing his arms around Jenkins. "I'd given you up for dead!"

"I... ah..." Jenkins' hands, amazingly, began to curl up to pat at the shorter man's back. "Likewise," he finished faintly. 

"Gal- No, what did they say? Jenkins, is that it? How did you come here?"

"I've been working here for... decades. But where were you? I searched, I asked Judson, I even spoke to... people better left alone."

Cedric pulled free. "I was in there!" he said, waving at the carving with an incredulous laugh. "The Librarian had asked me to check up on something in Cairo, and I heard a rumour which led me to Alexandria, where I fell afoul of the same trap as your young assistant here."

"For a hundred _years_!" Jenkins' voice rose sharply.

"Oh, I was the youngest one there by far, I can assure you." Cedric leaned in to squint at the carving. "He does seem to be enjoying himself, at least. I do recall Euclid was a gripping speaker, but it did become repetitive after a while."

Jenkins burst into rapid speech in a language Eve didn't recognize at all. Her ear kept insisting there was something familiar about the cadence - maybe it was Scottish, or Dutch, or a Scandinavian language - but she wasn't picking up any of the words. Jenkins was gesturing animatedly and actually touching Cedric at odd moments as if to be sure he was still really there. Cassandra's eyebrows were climbing to her hairline. Ezekiel had discreetly retreated about the time of the hug and was now watching from a corner by a bookshelf.

"What language is that?" Eve whispered.

"I'm not sure," said Cassandra slowly, "but I think it might be... Old English? Jake would know."

"He's going to be sorry he missed this," Eve said, watching as both men carried on in their dead language. 

"To be fair, he _does_ look like he's enjoying himself," Ezekiel pointed out.

"Right," Eve muttered. So was this another of Jenkins' old friends from Arthurian legend? If Cedric was comparably old, it could explain why had hadn't reacted very strongly to the loss of another century, even though he'd been staggered by the changes in technology. 

She wondered which legendary figure he was... but then, she'd been wondering which one was Jenkins and she hadn't been able to figure it out even with the clue Morgan le Fay had dropped. Whoever this was, it looked like someone else was going to have to bring the two men back to the present. "Okay, um, excuse me? Jenkins, Cedric? Maybe the reunion could wait until we figure out how to get Stone out of the carving? And Flynn... where is Flynn?"

Jenkins gave a start and pulled his fingers back from Cedric's elbow. "I... ah, yes, of course."

"Where is Flynn?" Eve repeated more sharply.

"In the storeroom. I thought it best to get him, ah, out of the way, so to speak."

A plaintive meow sounded from the hallway.

"All right!" Eve tried to summarize. "So we have a ring which might or might not be the key to transforming Flynn." She produced the ring and set it carefully on the worktable. "And we have the scroll which apparently came out of the carving, which might be the key to freeing Stone." She pulled out the handkerchief-wrapped bit of marble, unfoled it carefully, and set that down as well.

"Oh it is, I'm quite certain of that," said Cedric, peering at the scroll. "Although, I admit, not entirely certain of how to use it." He reached out.

Jenkins caught his hand, more lightly than Eve was about to. "Examine first, then experiment. I have made a few advances here." He looked around distractedly and found the strange two-eared sensor he'd left on his desk. "This should tell us what the relationship is between _that_ and _that_." He aimed the device first at the carving and then at the scroll, frowned at it, turned a knob, shook it, and tried again.

"How does it work?" Cedric asked.

The language in which Jenkins answered might have been modern English, but Eve understood only a little more than she had of the old English. She did recognize some words of mathematics, and a number of Greek letters, and what might have been a little Latin - but recognizing was not the same as understanding. She looked at Cassandra who was frowning in concentration, apparently following at least some of discussion. Giving up on her, Eve turned to Ezekiel. "Will you give me a shout if it looks like they're going to do anything stupid?"

He nodded. "Sure."

" _Before_ they do anything stupid?" she pressed.

"You got it. Count on me."

Eve sighed, pushed a stray strand of hair from her eyes, and went to check on the source of the increasingly insistent meows. She found tabby Flynn in the storeroom safely, if unhappily, ensconced in a perfectly normal cat carrier. "Where does Jenkins get all these things?" she muttered.

The cat muttered back, sounding a little sarcastic.

Eve looked at him. "If I let you out, how much trouble will you get into?"

The cat looked at her, his eyes gleaming greenly.

"Will you behave if I hold onto you?"

"Mau," said the cat.

Eve sighed. "All right, then, out you come." She closed the door of the storeroom first, then unlatched the cat carrier. The tabby tried to dart out past her, but when she caught him and swung him up into her arms he didn't claw or hiss. He fidgeted a little, shifting about until he felt properly secure, with his hind paws in the crook of her elbow and his front paws hooked on her shoulder. Then he began to purr.

"Think you can sweet-talk me, huh?" she said, heading back toward the main room. The cat purred harder, his eyes half-closed.

"So all we need to do is unroll the scroll," Cedric was saying as Eve re-entered the room.

"No!" said Cassandra sharply. "That's the trigger for bringing someone into the carving."

Jenkins was frowning. "Are you certain?"

"Yes. See, it's more tightly rolled now than it was in the picture Flynn took. And he's the one who managed to get the scroll out of the carving _and_ release the Bast lady without getting pulled in himself."

"I thought we agreed that the trigger for being pulled in was touching the carving in a certain way," Cedric mused.

"To be pulled in yourself, right. If you want to pull in someone _else_ , you unroll the carving." Cassandra gestured confidently. "The wave of orange energy spreads outward from the carving to the scroll, and anyone it encounters in that area gets swept into the carving."

"But not the holder of the scroll," Jenkins said.

Cassandra frowned. "I'm not sure. When Colonel Baird triggered it, we all went through the door before the energy wave could reach us. That interrupted the process."

"And that's when I was released from the carving," said Cedric. "So unrolling can be a trigger for release."

It sounded like they were getting stuck in their arguments. Eve tried to clarify. "I did unroll the scroll a little bit when we saw the orange wave. But I'm not sure if I would have noticed it rolling tighter while it was in my pocket."

Cassandra shook her head. "We're going to have to experiment."

"Isn't that what got us into trouble in the first place?" Eve said doubtfully.

"Not really," said Cedric. "No one's been hurt." 

Jenkins added, "The carving is a trap but it doesn't cause any harm. In fact, it's demonstrably a form of safe storage that can last for centuries. Not that we want to... Anyway. So long as there's still one person left outside who knows what we've been doing, any experiment will increase our knowledge base."

"Better take good notes, then," said Ezekiel. "Because I'm not standing anywhere nearby when that thing gets triggered."

"As long as the person holding the scroll stands closest to the carving, no one else should be swept up," said Cassandra. "Then there's only two variables to test - rolling and unrolling. Worst case, if it does bring in the holder of the scroll, one more person will get trapped."

They all looked at one another uncertainly. Ezekiel faded further back between the bookshelves.

Eve sighed. "I'll do it."

They all protested at once, but Cedric was the most persistent. "I should be the one."

Eve frowned. Jenkins' reaction to Cedric had reassured her considerably, but she still felt like there was something off about the old man. Some of Jenkins' other very old friends were not such savory characters, after all.

"There is another option," she pointed out. "How about we get Flynn back first, instead? He knows how to use the scroll." She realized that her right hand had been unconsciously stroking the cat this whole time, and carefully stilled it.

Cedric frowned. "I believe that will be the more difficult challenge. This is Flynn, yes?" He came closer to inspect the cat, who was kneading Eve's shoulder to get her to resume the petting.

"Well, Jenkins says it is. I don't really see much resemblance myself."

"It is certainly a transformed human, that much is clear," said Cedric with one hand hovering a few inches away from the cat.

"How can you tell?" asked Cassandra.

"I'm afraid I can't describe it, my dear. Everyone perceives magic in their own fashion. But there's a great deal of it around this cat."

"As for identity," said Jenkins, "the Annex recognized him. I felt that. And of course the evidence of the hair inside his clothes."

"Didn't the cult woman say she had transformed him?" Eve added.

"Yes, but she didn't say how, nor did she answer my question of how he might be transformed back into himself. But I'm certain we have the information here somewhere. The Library is an unparalleled repository of research." Cedric headed confidently to the back door.

Eve opened her mouth, but it was too late. Cedric was swinging the double doors open... to find the broom closet there. He swung around to stare at Jenkins.

"Where has the Library gone?"

Jenkins winced. "Yes, well, that is a question we've been trying to answer for some time. This is really just a card catalog, you see. The actual Library is... untethered."

Cedric stared. "Judson did that? But he wouldn't take such a drastic step unless -"

"Cassandra, I really think you ought to wait before you -" came Ezekiel's voice raised in alarm.

Eve whipped her head around in time to see Cassandra standing in front of the carving, then a flash of orange light came up. Reflexively Eve yelled and lunged -

and the orange light dissipated, leaving Jacob Stone standing in the space between Cassandra and the carving.

"Why would you do that?" Eve scolded Cassandra, catching up the discarded handkerchief and pulling the little carved scroll from her hand. "There was no hurry, no emergency. That means figure it out _before_ you act."

"I wanted him back," said Cassandra, her chin set stubbornly. "He can help us with the Flynn problem. And anyway, I was right about the scroll."

"Uh..." Jake ran a hand through his hair. "What just happened? I was somewhere... where was I?"

"You were in the carving," said Cedric, his tone gentle. 

"I had a dream about Euclid. He was lecturing about... I can't really remember." Jake turned to look at the carving as if he wanted to go back inside.

"Okay!" Eve said brightly, catching Jake by the shoulder and turning him away from the carving. "That's one problem solved. What about the other one?" She began disentangling the cat's claws from her pullover; he hadn't liked it when she yelled and darted towards Cassandra.

Jenkins and Cedric, Jake and Cassandra all started weighing in with their ideas about Flynn's transformation, interspersed with explanations to Cedric about what had happened to the Library and why they couldn't just go get the statue of Bast from a nearby shelf. After a few attempts to herd them so they were all thinking in the same direction, Eve gave up and imitated Ezekiel, fading into the background. She found a comfortable soft chair waiting in a corner and took that for a bad sign; apparently the Library thought this was going to be a long wait.

At least the cat appreciated it when she sat in the comfy chair.


	6. Chapter 6

The argument lasted for a while, and it kept trying to branch into other directions. Cedric said they just needed to pop into the Library and get the statue of Bast, which led to a complicated out-of-order explanation of how the Library was lost, and the statue was stolen by the Serpent Brotherhood (which apparently had changed somewhat over the past century, but only in the details). Cassandra wanted to know why the ring wouldn't work to reverse the spell, and Jenkins said that the ring was a link between the goddess and her worshipper; he used his double-antennaed radio thing to show that the ring had negligible magic of its own. They needed either more Bast worshippers, or something with a more direction connection to the goddess herself. Ezekiel suggested breaking into the Serpent Brotherhood's headquarters again to steal the statue back, but Jake was certain it hadn't been there when they liberated Santa so how did they know where it was being kept?

And so on, and so on, circling back on itself; the ring, the statue, the Library, the Brotherhood, the carving, and the cat - who sat purring and shedding on Eve's lap until she couldn't take it any longer. Just when she was about to explode, Cassandra went into a sensory spiral on math and magic and winter and black, a color which surprised Jake since apparently it hadn't come up before. Eve took that as a bad sign, and stood up to let Jake ease Cassandra down into the chair.

"Sorry - sorry!" Cassandra gasped, batting at invisible equations or memories or mosquitoes. "Just tired, I guess. Don't mind me."

"We're all tired," Jake growled. "It's been a long day, from Newfoundland to Alexandria and back."

"Tired and hungry," corrected Ezekiel from behind them. "That's why I called Domino's. About time we introduced Cedric to pizza, don't you think?"

"Contrary to what you may think, Mr. Jones, pepperoni is not the ambrosia of the gods," said Jenkins drily.

"Yeah, that's why I got one double pep and one sausage supreme!"

Jenkins blinked. "How did you know I -" He clamped his mouth shut.

Cedric was leaning heavily on his cane with a crooked smile. "I confess I wouldn't object to a spot of tea. I haven't had anything to eat or drink in over a century."

"We could all use a rest," said Eve firmly. "No more discussion on curses tonight. It's not an emergency, everyone's safe, we can take the time to get it right." She glanced at the cat who, after some elaborate yawning and stretching and shaking of paws, had found something to stalk in the corner of the room. She wasn't sure she wanted to know what it was.

And so, after tea and beer and pizza, which respectively made Cedric sigh and grimace and gorge himself (then look embarrassed when he realized he didn't have a clean handkerchief), they retreated to the guest room. Cedric stayed downstairs to talk to Jenkins; the cat followed Eve. 

She watched him inspecting the corners of her room. "Are you sure you wouldn't prefer your apartment instead?"

The cat hopped up on the bed, walked across her pillows, then curled up in the exact spot where her head would normally go.

"You're going to share that," Eve told him as she pulled some sleeping clothes from her closet. He just watched with slitted eyes while she changed and brushed her teeth, then found a new spot curled against her side after she lay down.

She woke to scratching sounds and the discovery that a cat litter box had appeared in her bathroom. While she was eyeing the box distastefully and wondering if she needed to clean it or if it would disappear when it was no longer needed, she heard a clacking sound and turned around to see that the new cat flap in the door was swinging itself shut.

"A cat door? _Seriously_?" But she was curious about what had drawn the cat out, so she pulled on a sweater over her pajamas and followed.

The cat was lying - no, crouching - at the top of the steps, his head tilted intently. One ear swiveled briefly to track Eve's approach, then pointed downward again. The end of his tail rose and fell rhythmically.

From her own old habits and because she was sneaking around after a cat in the middle of the night, Eve had been moving silently. Now she sat next to the cat with her feet two steps down, and listened. 

Jenkins was speaking softly, his voice rough and slow. In modern English now, which meant he didn't suspect an eavesdropper. But Eve couldn't help wondering what it must be like to live long enough to see languages change and die. They would have to adapt somehow, she supposed - did that make it hard to go back and speak the older way? Or harder to stay in the present, keeping up with all the changes to language and culture and even music?

"... Don't know the entire story, obviously," Jenkins was saying. "I was only peripherally associated with the Library; I would go days without talking to anyone. But I heard part of it from Charlene, of course, and a little more from Judson himself."

"But not from the Librarian?" Cedric asked.

Eve craned her head carefully. Cedric was sitting on the outside of Jenkins' desk with a teacup that she was guessing held something other than tea. Jenkins was presumably behind the desk, under the curve of the stairs.

"No, I'd never met him. Of the dozen - or, no, I suppose it must have been closer to two dozen - Librarians who passed through from the time that I... that I started working here, I had only interacted with three. When the previous one died, or faked his death..." Jenkins snorted. "Judson knew there was something fishy about it, or so I gathered, but he wouldn't say anything straight out. But apparently there was a young man he'd had an eye on as a candidate. Charlene mentioned some ridiculously baroque scheme, Judson pulling strings to get the fellow dismissed from his university position so he would be looking for a new job. And then the Library sent out several hundred invitations to applicants."

"Good heavens," Cedric murmured. "That seems excessive, given the rather short duration of the typical Librarian's career."

"The largest crop of interviews in two centuries, according to my research. And of course it was Judson's favorite who was chosen. But apparently Judson - or the Library, or both -"

"Can you even tell them apart these days? I scarcely could."

"Yes, well. Apparently there was some other reason for wanting so many applicants, but I didn't know that at the time. Things settled down for a few years. Flynn put the previous Librarian in his place, started learning the job and pulling off an impressive number of missions. I got quite a lot of research done. And then one night Judson came here - actually came, in the flesh, to talk to me. He sounded odd. Tired. But he wouldn't stop talking about Flynn, what a prodigy he was. I got impatient with the subject and sent him away. And the next day he was dead."

"Sacrificed himself for the Librarian?"

"No. Dammit, I could have understood that, even if it was idiocy. There's always another Librarian, and there will never be another..." Jenkins cleared his throat noisily. "No. He sacrificed himself for the Librarian's mother. Who was in the hospital dying when assassins came looking for her son, off on some absurd quest, and they found Judson instead. He bought her all of two weeks' time. Two thousand years, traded for two weeks! For nothing!"

"He didn't think it was nothing?"

"He said it was time. Time to hand over to Flynn. That Flynn was _special_ and he would _change_ things. And those two weeks made a difference to Flynn. He wouldn't have had time to say goodbye to his mother, or some such asinine excuse."

Eve's eyebrows flew up and she reached a hand to the cat, smoothing the ruffled hair along his back. So, Flynn had lost his mother and Judson at nearly the same time; that explained some things.

Cedric was speaking mildly. "Goodbyes can make quite a difference. They always did, for me."

"And yet you never gave _us_ the chance to say goodbye to you. I didn't even know you were doing missions for the Library!"

"Not for the Library. For Judson."

"Same difference. Just because I wasn't working for him at the time doesn't mean you couldn't tell me! You just... disappeared."

"But I wasn't dead."

"We didn't know that, did we? I believe Judson even tried to send the Guardian at the time after you, but you hadn't left enough clues behind."

"I'm here now, Galeas. Tell me how I can help?"

There was silence for a long time, Jenkins apparently failing to come up with any ideas.

"You said you do still talk to Judson occasionally, even though he's..."

"Incorporeal, now. He uses the mirror and it's almost the same as when he would send messages, but... but he'll never come here again. I'll never... and he looks so old, Bedwyr." 

Eve noted the name. She'd been trying to research Arthurian mythology, but there were so many different versions of so many stories that it was hard to know what to believe. Here was another small piece.

"You, and I, and Dulaque, the centuries have taken their toll on us. Now Morgan, she's spent all that time feeding off any magic she can come across. She could be your - or my - granddaughter, to look at her. But Judson? Curator of the greatest collection of magic the world has ever known, and he just spent himself and spent himself until there was almost nothing left. Even before the Library was lost, he was fading. And since then, I've only seen him twice, not even long enough to speak to him. I think Flynn has seen more of him." Jenkins sounded faintly disgusted. "Of course. For ten years, he's been so set on Flynn..."

"Perhaps you ought to trust his judgment, then."

Jenkins laughed bitterly. "I met Flynn the day the Library was lost, and he was busy bleeding to death. I could hardly even speak to him, knowing what Judson gave up - what _we_ gave up for his sake, and there he was leaking out all that potential all over my floor!" A deep sigh. "But he got past that. He's a capable Librarian, I suppose, but he's no Judson. He never will be."

"I'm serious, Galeas. You know that our time will be coming to an end. Morgan may have bought herself more of it, but the rest of us are reaching a tipping point. Judson, as ever, has led the charge, but we're all getting there. And the Library itself is due for some changes. This business of having multiple Librarians - that was Flynn's idea?"

"As soon as he took the reins, he changed course," Jenkins grumbled.

"Well and good. So Judson thinks this Flynn is the man to build the future. And Judson thinks it's his duty - which means yours, and mine as well - to prepare him for that. We follow where he leads, do we not?"

There was another long silence, then Jenkins admitted in a low tone, "I'm tired sometimes. But I'm not ready to die. I've only just begun..."

"Just begun to learn," said a new voice. Judson's voice, and after all she had heard, the weakness and the slight tremor of that voice meant much more to Eve.

Flynn the cat squirmed out from under her hand and pelted down the stairs.


End file.
